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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Snow(y) Day for a Monster of a Game.

The kids had a snow day today and so did I--although not because of the ice and snow, but because I spent all weekend running Magic prerelease events.

We wanted to play something and even though I've been working on 1st Age and enjoying Adventurer, Conqueror, King, I was in the mood to run some Dragon Age.

My son made a Mage with the Arcane Warrior specialty and my next to youngest daughter made a Rogue with the Bard specialty.

Character creation took about 45 minutes.

As we talked about what kind of game they wanted to play things kept coming back to cryptids.

I won't lie, I enjoy paranormal shows and watch them with the kids. I'm not saying I'm a believer, but I find the programs and entertaining and intriguing. The kids wanted to use some of this as a basis for the game.

They decide they were twins from the village of Hommelet and their parents, Penny and Midas Macabre, ran the Cryer, the village newspaper.

I gave them three possibilities for how the game started:

1) Investigating sasquatch sightings in Decatur Forest.
2) Checking out rumors of a magic portal near Grimhenge (reminiscent of Stonehenge).
3) Trying to spot Raleigh's Comet on Point Pleasant.

One liked option 1 and one liked option 2, so they decided that Grimhenge was on the edge of Decatur Forest and close to Lake Lafayette, and they were looking into rumors of strange happenings.

Things went well, my daughter's character Katie got some footage of a pair of squatchs. A mothman exited the magic portal and a strange robot investigated my son's character, Lance, when he used this Twin Sense to telepathically speak to Katie. The robot ended up injuring a sqatch, before it's mate subdued the robot. Katie and Lance then took the robot back their workshop to consult with their mentor, the cryptozoologist, Bromley Bookend. But before they left the area, Katie got a picture of some ghost light coming through a portal. She decided to sit on her footage and not upload it their blog.

Both kids asked if the game could be set in the modern day, instead of some ancient world and decided that cryptids couldn't be hurt buy guns, which was why they used bows and swords. However, they didn't actually fight anything, even when the robot was actively hunting the sasquatch, they tried to communicate with it. It was very refreshing.

The Adventure Game Engine performed admirably and the more I use it the more I appreciate it. We toned down consulting the Stunt Chart and just used the number on the Dragon Die as a guide for the kid's imagination.